Yell The Next AR Browser?

At last weeks Augmented Planet meet-up in London one of my predictions was we will see an influx of augmented reality browsers up until Apple open up the camera API and the focus shifts to markers and doing interesting things with the camera feed. Until then everyone that has a directory service or a product that provides location data will want to get in on the augmented reality hype and add AR to their product. It’s not a bad thing, if I had a server full of restaurant reviews or other useful location aware titbit’s you could bet I’d be working on an iPhone app and trying to figure out how I make some money.

Yell.com a UK Yellow Pages company look like becoming the next big brand to release an augmented reality browser. No doubt having data for probably every business in the UK Yells browser will provide us with rich local search , but from looking at the concept video it looks like it will go a step further than simply telling you a good place to eat. Listening to the voice in the video the user is able to find out about special offers offered by local restaurants. Perfect for those beer nights out that result in the inevitable curry.

The differences I see are, Layar’s business is providing an augmented reality browser and working with developers to build their own layers, so we see layers from everything from bell ringing locations to locations of tourist attractions.

Yell on the other hand are a yellow pages company with listings of thousands of businesses so they’ll have no interest in 3rd party layers and will focus on promoting their local search aspect, eg finding a local restaurant.

I think Yell will have more in common with the Yelp browser.
From the video it looks like they have done reasonable job with the UI, but from my first browser head to head having good data is critical or the app is next to useless.